Less than eight months after the release of her fourth studio album, Red, the 23-year-old singer says she's feeling the beginning of her next creative phase.

"It's
starting," she told reporters backstage at the CMA Music Festival in
Nashville on Thursday. "All the anxiety is starting. When the anxiety
starts, the writing happens right after, usually."

Swift has learned from past experiences that the writing process for one of her albums takes about two years.

"Whatever
I write in the first year is going to get thrown away," she says. "I'm
going to like it, but it's going to sound like the last record. The
second year usually sounds like the next project."

Making each
album sound different from the previous one is important, she says. "I
think you need to change up your influences. I think you need to be
inspired by different things than you were inspired by before."